![]() On Christmas Day, there were only 8 cancels at Midway. The total of 110 cancels was residual damage from the day before, but the airline rebounded to operating 77 percent of the flights that did fly on schedule that day. By the 26th, only 4 flights were canceled through the entire system, though on-time performance has lagged somewhat and didn’t climb back above 70 percent again until the 28th. The weather ended up being fine after that, but Southwest had to play catch-up. Would it be able to fix the operation or would this end like the last holiday season where it truly melted down and fell apart for days on end? In this case, it was the former. ![]() ![]() That day, Southwest canceled 299 flights but only 181 touched Midway. The rest were mostly downline impacts where those airplanes were supposed to go. This did cause a jam up at Midway, however. Airplanes eventually made their way in, but there weren’t enough gates. Usually, the taxi-in time at Midway for Southwest is around 7 minutes. On the 24th, the average for the day was just over 59 minutes. The next morning, the fog was still there, but the forecast was for it to lift by mid-morning. The Terminal Area Forecast (TAF) put out by the National Weather Service (NWS) at 3am CT on the 24th said that fog would remain until 9am and then it would lift. But the weather improved more rapidly than that. A look at the reported conditions (METAR/SPECI) for Midway that day shows that at 4:53am, fog had lifted and visibility was up to 2 miles. By 5:01am it was up to 6 miles, and then just before 6am it was still at 4 miles.Īs I understand it, Southwest was hesitant to believe this, but after consulting with the NWS, it decided that the forecast was good enough that it could send flights toward Midway again. Oops.īy 6:30am, the fog was back with a vengeance and visibility was less than 1/2 mile. On top of that an overcast settled in at 200 feet. That overcast didn’t get above 300 feet until the 11:16am METAR which means it went a lot longer than planned. Those airplanes that headed toward Midway ended up diverting. On the early evening of the 23rd, dense fog settled in over the Chicagoland area. It was so dense that visibility was below minimums for safe operations at Midway, and Southwest had no choice but to take action. It first diverted the airplanes that were on their way before the fog settled. Then it canceled the rest of the day plus the early morning departures the next day. On the 23rd, 128 of the 134 systemwide cancellations touched Midway. As you can see, Southwest was running a spectacular operation up until December 23, and that’s when things got ugly for three days. The airline canceled 134 flights on the 23rd, 299 on the 24th, and 110 on the 25th.
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